I recently read this great article by Megan Berry, at Open Forum – Why increasing followers is not a Twitter strategy. Absolutely brilliant article!

As the headline suggests, Megan talks about how numbers can misguide you on Twitter and explains well about why “follower number” isn’t everything.

“If your social media consultant or manager points first to your Twitter follower count when you ask how things are going, you have a problem.”

I love this line.

Now, before you jump into conclusions, I’m not going to talk about how Megan is wrong in the above mentioned article. But yes, I’d like to throw some light around how she could’ve missed a point in the whole article, and add a new perspective to it.

1. At the end of the day, its all about numbers

When we talk about engagement, there is an often voluntarily forgotten fact – that the more the numbers the better the engagement, and to get more is not easy. Most of the times, we slip from Point 1 to Point 2 as a compromise.

Point 1 – To get more listeners for your business.

Point 2 – If you can’t find enough people interested in your brand, lets talk with how much ever less we have – and call it “engagement”.

2. Let engagement not be a compromise for not being popular

So, the point is, if you can engage a bunch of people well, you can probably do it better with a bigger bunch of people.

But let’s not say you’re engaging in conversations with a few folks just because you could not reach out to a bigger audience.

3. Businesses should grow on social media, not limit itself

Social media is a new platform for business to reach out to their audience.

And in all possibilities, if there are good products, they will scale up from where they started.

One shouldn’t limit it for the sake of experiment. We’re all experimenting with social media and if there’s growth, it would definitely show up in numbers. So bigger follower numbers often means growth, not necessarily anything else.

I believe, if you have the right skills and strategy, you can engage well with 5000 people as the same way you would do with 50 people.

You only need a team with the right skills.

But engaging with 50 people is not any more significant that engaging with 5000 people, in fact its the other way around.

5. Its about your brand not your followers

The bottom line is, are you able to have a good brand recall value among your audience, do they listen to your messages, do they take you seriously or not?

It is not how many followers you have and how engaging you are.

The thing is, when you talk about “How having a lot of followers is not the real deal”, you’re also trying to say (even though unknowingly) that “Having a lot of followers is the real deal, but its okay if you can’t” – which is essentially wrong.

Numbers are always good, but if you miss to see the value in them, then you’re making a compromise.